Paphitis wrote:Furthermore, the Nimitz Class only have some RIM Sparrow SAM and a few Phalanx CIWS. It's their last line of defence. These Ships, rely on the Battle Group for defence. In order to get to a fleet carrier, and enemy will need to get through 90 odd Fighters, and 40 odd escorting Cruisers, destroyers and frigates most of which have AEGIS target acquisition and fire control systems. They will need a miracle to even get within 100 miles of a Fleet Carrier.

In fact, I do not believe any country is capable enough to get close to a Fleet carrier. Submarines can, but that is when a Fleet carrier is sailing solo and not with the Battle Group. If a Fleet carrier is surrounded by a battle group, then I highly doubt any Submarine will be able to get through their sonar net.

With no wish to get caught in a crossfire here (pun!). It has been done.

January 1982. The Arabian sea:

"Finally the Americans ’struck’ my last frigate and, as the sun set over the Arabian Sea and night began to stream in, Glamorgan turned into the two-hundred-mile zone. The dusk faded into darkness and I ordered every light in the ship to be switched on, plus as many extras as we could find. I intended that from any distance we would look exactly like a cruise liner—from the bridge we looked like a floating Christmas Tree.

We barreled on through the tense night, in towards the USS Coral Sea, listening all the time to the International Voice radio frequencies. Sure enough, eventually one of the American destroyer captains came on line, asking us to identify ourselves. My in-house Petter Sellers imitator, already primed for the job, replied in his very best Anglo-Indian: ‘This is the liner Rawalpindi, bound from Bombay to the port of Dubai. Good Night, and jolly good luck!’ He sounded like the head waiter from the Surbiton tandoori. But it was good enough. The Americans, who were conducting a ‘limited war’, were rather obliged to believe us and let us through while they thought about it. Vital minutes slipped by until we were exactly eleven miles from the carrier, with our Exocet system locked on her. They still thought our splendid display of lights was the Rawalpindi on her innocent business…

Then one of my officers calmly called the carrier to break the appalling news to Tom Brown that we were now in a position to put his ship on the bottom of the Indian Ocean and there was nothing he could do about it. ‘We fired four Exocets twenty seconds ago’, he added for good measure, knowing this gave them about forty-five seconds to hit the deck…about half as much notice HMS Sheffield would receive, six months from now."

From "100 Days. Memoirs of the Falklands Task Group Commander". Admiral Sandy Woodard.

Yes it is possible and you can trick them but only when they are not on high alert. They would know that there were British naval Ships in the area, but I wouldn't expect them to be so lax if there were any Russian ships.

An Australian Customs Aircraft (Surveillance Australia) was intercepted and surrounded by 2 Trackers after it had switched on its Radar within about 150 miles of a US carrier. The radar on these aircraft are military spec Raytheon Systems Air and Surface Search.

The aircraft just came in formation and the American pilots were just exchanging pleasantries after they realized it was an Australian Surveillance Aircraft. It was interesting.

An Australian Submarine also got to within 1000m of a US Fleet carrier at periscope depth, where they had the carrier lined up for a shot. Photos (its actually a post card) were sent to the Pentagon which is the usual practice. However, I do not believe this Fleet carrier had a battle Group as an escort, but a mere 2 ships were escorting it near Hawaii. I don't think they would have had a hope in hell if they had to go under an entire battle Group to get to the carrier.

They also fooled them because they were close to shore and "cloaking" their noise signature because the sound waves bounce off rocks and so forth. Don't know how that works...